


A Darker Color

by anthemofourlives



Series: Expensive Mistakes [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Implied Relationships, M/M, Threesome - F/M/M, mild description of violence, post-threesome fall-out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 23:48:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14200293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthemofourlives/pseuds/anthemofourlives
Summary: Who hasn’t acted like a little shit when they woke up with a huge hangover after they had a drunken threesome with their best friends? We’ve all been there.-This deals with the rest of season 1 after the threesome, and just generally how Eliot handles everything leading up to the s1 finale. The first fic in this series is You're the Eight Wonder if you're interested in reading.





	A Darker Color

Eliot apparently has a little bit of shame left deep down, and it’s ignited knowing he ruined one of his best friend’s relationships with his own inability to keep his dick to himself.

-

They had all gathered in the common room, naturally congregating in preparation for their mission. No one wants to make eye contact, but the atmosphere is getting more and more awkward by the second, especially given poor Penny has not one clue as to what happened to make things so awkward.

“All y’all look like you did a crime last night,” Eliot hears Penny say questioningly as he contemplates his cigarette dejectedly. There’s a tension in the room that’s hard to breathe through, let alone trying to speak. It’s heavy and oppressive, and all Eliot wants is to be literally any other place but here.

Penny continues trying to get through to them, listing off the dangers of the Neitherlands and so on, really Eliot thinks it sounds like a fucking pleasant distraction and maybe it’ll take Alice’s mind off of what happened enough that he won’t have to feel her piercing glare trying to burn holes in him every so often (when it wasn’t focused on Q or Margo). He takes a swig out of his flask and looks out the window, imagining how it must feel to be one of the students crossing the lawn, not having the weight of everything on your shoulders. Eliot knows how important everything Penny is telling them is, but he just can’t find anything in him that gives the slightest shit. He feels like a black hole has opened up in the center of his chest, eating any kindness or compassion or decency and leaving only bitterness and shame and regret.

“We’re fine, aren’t we, El?” he hears Margo say in what could definitely be a convincingly breezy tone. she’s wearing a turtleneck, which is maybe a little obvious when she has the makeup expertise and magical practice to be able to hide any marks Quentin left on her last night, but conservative may be the best option with Alice on the war path.

“We’re phenomenal,” he agrees, looking over at Penny who wore a bewildered expression on his face.

“Fine, okay, we’re not okay,” Q spat out, arms crossed protectively over his chest. His eyes were puffy from crying or from exhaustion or both, and he looked weary to his very core. 

“Forget it,” Alice cut in impatiently, “We just need to-“

“We’re going to-“

“It’s over!” Alice burst out, standing up, “I need a minute”

“Alice is just a little bit sensitive right now,” Margo tried to offer Penny, who was standing there with his mouth open in confusion, an explanation.

“Would you just shut the fuck up, Margo?” Quentin said venomously, turning on her.

“Are you seriously mad at me right now?”

“What the fuck did I just walk into?” Penny muttered exasperatedly. Eliot could sympathize with his aggravation.

“My life. Welcome.”

“It’s not funny, and it’s not a joke,” Q fixed his scowl on Eliot. Luckily the alcohol was kicking in enough for him to use it as a half-ass shield, blocking him from the full brunt of Quentin’s anger. 

“But it truly is, Quentin,” unluckily it only encouraged Eliot to say stuff that was only feeding the fire between the two of them. Last night that would have been a good thing. Funny how the morning could take the passion and turn it into the ruinous situation unfolding. If Quentin could look at this the way Eliot was, he would see the humor too. In a sick way it was fucking hilarious that Eliot got everything he wanted in a storm of emotions, only for that to be the very thing that was destroying the few good things he had left.

“You people need to stow your shit,” Penny was a piss poor mediator but Eliot had to give him some credit for even trying.

“We get it, would you just please give us a f-… goddamn minute!” Quentin shouted. As soon as the words left his mouth though, he looked at Penny with something like regret on his face for the outburst. Penny took him in for a second, with probably the closest thing to hurt on his face as anyone would ever see. Eliot took yet another swig.

Penny stalked out of the room, presumably to find Alice and try to figure out why the hell they’d all lost their minds over night. But without him there to vocalize how awful they were acting it was somehow even worse. Eliot finally relieved himself from the tension of the room, however briefly, to get himself a real drink. He asked both the others whether they wanted one too and got no response. Suit yourselves. When he came back Quentin was pacing by the wind seat he’d been occupying and Margo had begun packing a bag. He could feel the anger rolling off the both of them, and he was almost glad for the hole that was replacing real emotions in his chest, this whole ordeal would be even more exhausting if he had all that anger to accompany the heartbreak. The two of them kept shooting poisonous looks at each other and spitting out snapping little quips while avoiding directly responding to the other person.

Eliot found himself attempting to moderate, trying to pacify Bambi who he knew was hurting less and would be marginally easier to ease off the fire. It only seemed to fan her flames, she clearly expected him to take her side and was angrier for his neutrality.

“I don’t need a pass,” she put blandly, aggressively folding an item of clothing.

“You two ruined my life.”

So there it was. Eliot barely heard what Margo fired back at Q before he was interrupting.

“Can we just cut to the part where we go to another world and… skip the whole guilt and recriminations bit, please?” Eliot said robotically, emptiness inside him consuming more and more as Quentin lashed out, but it didn’t seem like less than he deserved.

“You’d like that wouldn’t you?” Quentin said before walking out of the common room.

“Is it wrong that I’m starting to side with the Beast?” Margo demanded angrily.

Eliot slid down the couch until he was staring at the ceiling and sighed.

“He’s hurting, Margo-“

“I don’t give a flying fuck what he’s feeling, that doesn’t give him the right to blame us. We all had an equal amount of control over ourselves last night, we were all equally fucked up. I’m not about to bow my head and take the blame for ruining what anyone could see wouldn’t have lasted anyway. It was shaky footing in that relationship at the best of times.”

“If we all had an equal say in last night then we chose to sleep with a friend who was in a relationship just as much as he decided to cheat on his girlfriend.”

“I’ll be honest with you, El, Alice really wasn’t even a fleeting thought in my mind.”

“Mine either,” Eliot sighed “I think that kind of makes it worse.”

“I refuse to apologize for the only fun that I’ve had since I got back from Ibiza. Maybe even longer, Todd is really fucking annoying.”

Eliot didn’t answer, he knew that was a jab at how distant and out of his mind he’s been. He had nothing to say for himself, he was well aware that he’s been hurting Margo but he had no clue what to do about that when it felt like he was drowning in pain himself.

“Besides, it really doesn’t matter. There’s nothing like a life-or-death mission to bring people closer together. Either we die or we’ll be closer than ever, all of this is hardly going to seem that important after we’ve faced the Beast head-on.”

Leave it to Margo to put things in perspective so bluntly.

-

“Boys and girls, I hate to cut into what is clearly a moment,” Eliot announced to Alice and Quentin who were having a heated discussion in the dining room “But the fact is according to the best and only magic we have, we have to go or the Beast will kill us. End of story. Take out your emotions, you can fight later. Sound good?”

Quentin glanced at him tearfully for maybe half a second then looked helplessly around the room, and Eliot swept out just as fast. Eliot had been trying not to overhear their conversation but it was pretty clear that Alice had revenge-fucked Penny, making Quentin even more distraught. Really, the emotions bottles were going to be a huge reprieve at this point because this mess was getting more and more tangled as time went on.

They all stood in a circle, Margo, Quentin, and himself taking out their emotions, quickly followed by Alice. Everything was gone just like that, and the single minded focus on the task at hand was back. The emptiness Eliot felt from his depressive episode and the emptiness that he felt from lack of emotions were completely different. The depression ripped a hole in him, left a gaping, raw wound that was debilitating and painful. The spell was simply the absence of everything, the removal wasn’t painful. Instead of searing pain where his usual emotions sat, there was simply nothing.

“Join hands, everyone,” he says, reaching out to Q and Margo so they could teleport to the Neitherlands. They’re climbing out of the Earth fountain the second that Penny touches the button. The map flies out of Alice’s hand though, and back into the fountain. Quentin goes back to get it, and he’s surrounded by Neitherlands mercenaries.

“Run!” he yells out, and they immediately flee as Q falls back into the fountain to avoid a spell being shot at him.

-

Penny takes them to a library, the woman in charge there orders all food, drinks, and intoxicants be surrendered to her (Eliot is reluctant to surrender his flask even without his emotions). Apparently that includes their emotion bottles, which is frustrating but at least the return of the emotions isn’t as charged as it usually is, and it’s only a quick burst of intensity, then back to the miserable flatline he’s been stuck in.

They’re pretty much stuck in the library until they can figure another plan out, but there’s something nagging in the back of Eliot’s head. They supposedly have books on everyone in this person, right down to the most boring and insignificant seeming, it has everything from what Penny had told them. Eliot had to know exactly what had happened with Mike. Partly out of a sick, destructive curiosity of how badly he could hurt himself with this information, and partly out of this tiny, dull spark of hope that maybe, just maybe, any little part of it was real. Who knows what the Beast possessing Mike McCormick had done to his head, really anything could be possible. Right?

Wrong. Michael McCormick was a perfectly happy man with a perfectly pleasant life. He was a Very Heterosexual Republican from Texas, he had a loving family, close friends, and a stable, well-paying job. His time at Brakebills had been wonderful for him, he’d been a slightly above average student, kept his nose clean, and it had afforded him countless opportunities once he’d graduated. It had truly just been random fucking chance that he was on his way to visit campus when the Beast was looking for an opportunity in and possessed him. He was simply a pretty meat puppet that the Beast had used to charm and seduce Eliot with, the Beast had picked through the man’s mind and found a few facts to create a little back story with, then set to work using Eliot to get a chance at killing Quentin. And Eliot had just been so goddamn easy to use.

With only a simple flick of his fingers that had been more reflex in the moment than any kind of coherent thought, Eliot had snapped this man’s neck and took his beautiful life away. He could taste bitter bile threatening to come up as he tried to digest this information.

“What have you got?” Margo came up to him, having exhausted her search for anything vaguely useful, “Anything?”

“The book of Mike McCormick,” Eliot mumbled, still reading it even though it was making him sick to his stomach, “Novella, really. He was actually a Republican, can you believe it? But the worst part; his life was happy.”

“Eliot, he’s gone. Why are you torturing yourself?”

“Because he’s gone and it’s my fault,” Eliot said with venom in his voice, “And out of all the people who don’t understand, somehow you top the list.”

Eliot walked away, feeling somehow even worse. He’d gotten what he wanted, another perfect torture device. Eliot dumped the book into a waste bin sitting at the end of an aisle, then quickly went through the motions to set in on fire, the short spell second nature to him. Set the evidence aflame and don’t look back.

“What are you doing?” he heard Margo ask in bewilderment.

“Putting the past behind me.”

“No, stop!” the head of the library or whatever apparently had a sixth sense for books in trouble and a no tolerance policy for purposefully harming them. They were out of the library within seconds, as were Penny and Alice.

“What did you do?” so here was yet another thing Eliot managed to fuck up.

They decide to try to make their way back to the Earth fountain, but unfortunately it seems the Neitherlands mercenaries are expecting them to try back there and just waiting for their inevitable return.

“It was worth a shot,” he said resignedly, “I mean, what else are we going to do?”

“I don’t know, maybe not get us kicked out of the library in the first place?” Alice snapped. His pathetic state wasn’t garnering any sympathy from her, which was fair. She had every right to be furious with him a thousand times over.

“All right, let’s keep moving,” Penny said anxiously, herding them away from the Earth fountain. Despite his lone wolf vibe he tried to keep going, Eliot wouldn’t be surprised if Penny cared more deeply for everyone’s safety than anyone else in the group, especially right now. A hooded figure cut around the corner they were approaching and Penny immediately went into a defensive position. “Hey, not one more step. We’re highly trained Earth magicians.”

“Hold up, hold up you guys are from Brakebills?” the guy said excitedly as he lowered his hood, immediately removing all threat levels as he revealed his round and innocent looking face “Dude! Josh Hoberman, class of ’16. Come with me if you want to live. I’ve always wanted to say that.”

Josh chuckled a bit to himself before eyeing his unamused and cautious crowd, Penny and Eliot still had their arms raised despite the frankly goofy looking and harmless boy in front of them, then his face suddenly sobering as he peered at the Earth fountain, “But seriously, um… we should go.”

He led them quickly to a small abandoned building that he was squatting in. It was modestly furnished and most of it was dedicated to a little green house set up where he was growing vegetables. He welcomed them to eat anything they wanted, except the carrots which were supposedly psychedelic. Eliot filed that information away for the first chance he got to snag one of them. All of the vegetables were apparently a little off, the Circumstances in the Neitherlands being difficult to compensate for and Josh was growing them using magic.

Alice asked him how long he’d been in the Neitherlands, and he told them a few weeks. Time was fucked up here, and Eliot felt a little rush of sympathy for the kid. When he got back he’d have two missing years to account for. If he got back. Who knew what was going to happen to any of them. Josh told them his class had gone to Fillory for spring break. Victoria, a traveler in his year, had taken them there. Penny recognized the name, he’d been psychically communicating with her while she was trapped in whatever dungeon the Beast had deemed fit. Penny was unable to bring people along when he traveled, unlike this Victoria. Luckily Josh knew exactly where the Fillory fountain is.

“The problem is all the battle magic dick buckets waiting to vaporize us. Discuss.”

With that, Josh left the room they were all standing in, leaving everyone to stare at each other in disbelief. They couldn’t think of any solid plan now that the bottles they had enchanted for their emotions had been destroyed, and decided to sleep on it and figure things out tomorrow. Eliot found a very small, stiff, and uncomfortable couch to pass out on, knowing his neck would be very stiff in the morning.

-

He pocketed a carrot first thing in the morning, taking a bite then zoning out while Alice went over whatever brilliant plan she’d thought up over night. The urgent times they were in were doing absolutely nothing to quell his self-destructive streak, so he decided he might as well lean into it. He heard something about having to duck down while they were walking to the fountain. It was all kind of bouncing off of him, and then they were all leaving, Margo calling back to make sure he followed.

If Eliot was in his right mind he might have wondered when he was going to stop sinking lower and lower and finally just hit rock bottom. But, at the pace he was going he was either going to have to be forcefully dragged out of it or die. There was no rock bottom for him because he would keep finding more and more creative ways to out do himself every day. It was barely even shocking when the stepped out of the phosphoromancy bubble and turned to face the mercenary they were passing, less out of a death wish and more out of being incredibly fucked up and just thinking it was the thing to do. He didn’t even flinch when he heard the gunshot, saw the red blood begin to bloom on the man’s clothing as he fell backward.

“Yeah! I brought a gun!” Margo exclaimed angrily, Eliot wasn’t quite sure who she was talking to or if it was just a generalized statement fueled by adrenaline, “You’re welcome. Why didn’t you move?”

“Acid carrots,” Eliot heard his voice scratch barely a whisper from his throat and he turned around slowly, still in a dream-like state that remained unbroken in all the commotion, “Margo, you saved my actual life.”

“Hooray, you live to drink another day,” she replied in a biting tone, clearly not the least bit amused with his intoxicated state. There was no time for him to reply, even if he could think of one. More Neitherlands battle magicians were surrounding them and they had to make a sprint for the fountain.

They landed neatly in Fillory, and immediately it felt different there. The air had an alluring, addictive quality to it. Breathing it felt like finally getting a vital element you didn’t even know you were being deprived of. Eliot closed his eyes and let the sensation wash over him, savoring it, then suddenly with a loud crack a sharp stinging sensation came over the left side of his face. He stumbled backwards and brought his hand to his cheek, confused. He opened his eyes to see Margo with her hand raised to strike him again. 

“I said-” she yelled, slapping him again before he could get out of her way, “Why. The fuck. Didn’t. You move!”

“Hey!” Penny barked, catching Margo’s wrist before she could hit Eliot for the fifth or sixth time, it was hard to keep track at this point, “As much as this douchebag deserves it, we don’t have the time or the damn luxury to turn on each other right now. We need to find somewhere we can regroup and form a plan, somewhere not out in the open so the fucking Beast can’t find us right away, maybe?”

“I know a bar not too far from here,” Josh offered.

“That’ll work. Eliot, can you get your shit together for a couple of hours so we don’t all die? After that, feel free to continue your tortured road to your own pathetic death, just try to leave me and everyone else here out of it. You know, you’re actually a talented magician when you put some damn effort in.”

Eliot just shrugged and numbly followed as Josh led the group down to an charming little pub. He knew he was naturally gifted when it came to magic, he just really couldn’t give a shit about that at the moment. He had no idea if the off-handed almost compliment was aimed at what Penny might think was his wounded confidence, but Eliot’s ego was far from injured. Knowing what his own strengths had never been his struggle, it was being hyperaware of his own shortcomings that got him. 

They sat at a table and Josh went to get a round of drinks and some food, an overly yeasty pint of local ale that Eliot choked down despite himself and a thick hearty soup that he wasn't able to quite stomach the thought of at the moment. That earned him dagger-like glares from Margo, but he really couldn’t be bothered to care. Nobody could think of a solid plan for how to retrieve that damn knife Q had been talking about, or even where to really start with it. Eliot finally took it upon himself to draw a crude map from what he remembered of their walk to the small pub and what the maps on the end papers of the Fillory books looked like. He scrawled a short note at the bottom.

“Enchanted this to find you if you ever arrive.  
Hope you’re not dead.  
Margo being such a bitch.  
Follow map to find us.  
-El”

Finally folding it and casting the spell to have it locate Quentin the moment he showed up in Fillory, he sent the elegant little paper airplane on it’s way out the window.

“That’s what I have to contribute to this,” he said flatly “Now excuse me, I’m going to go do shots with that bulldog over there.”

Eliot pointed to the corner booth, where a sad looking dog wearing a ridiculous tunic was nursing a beer. The dog immediately turned to look at Eliot, let out a deep sigh, and hopped down from his seat to come trudging over.

“El what the fuck are you doing?” Margo hissed at him, absolutely furious.

“Making friends with the locals,” He replied lightly, smiling and patting the empty bench next to him as the bulldog finished it’s waddle over, “Hello sir.”

“Afternoon,” the dog replied politely, in a much more dignified voice than Eliot was expecting. The dog motioned towards the barkeep, who poured a clear liquid into a few shot glasses and brought them promptly over, “Name’s Bristlycoat.”

“I’m Eliot,” he said, raising a glass to the dog and promptly downing it.

“Charming.”

Eliot pretended to be fascinated in what the dog was going on about, maintaining eye contact and adding an interested “hmmm” and a nod every now and then. He was avoiding eye contact with Margo, who he imagined was trying to glower at him hard enough that he’d eventually burst into flames. Penny and Alice got up to quietly discuss plans at another table, while Josh focused on wolfing down the soup. Eliot supposed it was a relief for him to eat food that tasted the way it was supposed to. The dog was droning on and on about some sort of land dispute his family was having, pausing now and then to lap up a drink.

“Cheers, B,” Eliot threw back another shot, just as his own skillfully folded airplane was thrown back across the room at him. Just as Alice and Penny were coming back to the table. He looked across to the doorway to see Quentin standing there, ghost of a soft smile on his face that quickly seemed to fade as he started to remember all the interpersonal drama that was happening in the group at the moment. Eliot almost couldn’t help the soft pang that echoed dully through his chest at the sight of the boy, he wondered if he was always going to feel an ache for Quentin Coldwater.

“Really good to see you again, Q,” he started, before squinting at the girl next to him, “Why am I looking at the hedgebitch who tried to kill you?”

The girl rolled her eyes, as if she somehow had the right to act lofty and holier-than-thou.

“We worked it out. I wouldn’t be here without her, so…”

“I’m here, you don’t have to like me.”

Margo stood up and put herself at the head of the table, staring down Julia.

“Oh, don’t you worry. We don’t.”

Eliot felt another pang, pleased that Margo held such contempt for a girl she never met nor had any personal quarrel with aside from the fact that she’d tried to harm Quentin. Say what you will about Margo, but she held a fierce loyalty to her friends that was hard to match. Julia scoffed a little at this, seeming to think the whole thing behind and beneath her. They quickly settled their tab and left the small pub and left for the knife maker, giving a short introduction to Josh for Q and the hedgebitch.

“This is our friend Quentin, and this is the horrendous hedgebitch who keeps trying to ruin his life,” Margo puts simply.

“I’m sorry, have we even met?” Julia asks, which Margo ignored effortlessly.

“Okay, I’m Josh and I’m apparently one of the missing class of 2016 at Brakebills. Nice to meet you, I guess.”

“Nice to meet you, Josh,” Julia replies, being bright and friendly to try to counteract the prejudice he might be brewing against her from all their attitudes.

“So do you know where the Beast is holding Victoria or not?” Penny asks Q, getting impatient.

“I think the dungeon is in The Castle That Isn’t There,” Quentin said while consulting a Fillory book. Eliot didn’t want to know if bringing a Fillory novel into the actual world of Fillory was breaking some universal law that would cause the walls of this particular reality to come crumbling down.

“That’s the stupidest name I’ve ever heard.”

“You didn’t just do shots with a bulldog named Bristlycoat,” Eliot interjected.

They eventually stumbled across the grave of Martin Chatwin, and spent a sobering moment staring at it. It was strange to feel such real grief for someone you thought was a fictional character your whole life. Eliot couldn’t spend too long looking at it and contemplating the horrible short life that Martin Chatwin endured, so when Margo turned away he followed suit, expecting Quentin to catch up fairly quickly. 

When they got to the knife maker’s Quentin and Julia went in alone, then came out and explained the payment situation to the group. The knife maker wanted a position of royalty, by marrying his daughter off to one of the group. In Fillory, you could only be a king or queen if you were from Earth, so it was down to them. There was apparently a knife that would only draw blood if you were meant to be the High King.

The men all lined up while the knife maker made a dramatic little speech, then went to run the blade across each of their palms while his daughter waited anxiously to see who would be her husband. Kind of a fucked up way to get married off. After seeing exactly nothing happen to Quentin, Josh and Penny, Eliot was kind of beginning to question the validity of what looked like a miniature pie knife.

“So what exactly is supposed to- oh!” Eliot felt the knife cut deeply into his palm, leaving behind a irritated looking wound. He hissed and pulled a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket.

“Get the fuck out,” Margo said, half in awe and half in anger.

“Well… High King make certain instinctual sense, I guess,” Eliot quipped, trying to keep his voice casual as he thought about the sudden weight of an entire kingdom on his shoulders.

“Your Majesty,” the knife maker bowed deeply in front of him. This man was about to be his father in law.

He was about to marry this man’s daughter.

“Well, this’ll make him easier to live with,” Penny said dryly.

-

It seemed like in an instant, this man’s entire family and all the neighbors knew that his daughter was to be married off to the High King, the High King, can you believe it? There were dozens of people swarming around the center of this little town, trying their best to get ready for a wedding that was fit for royalty. Eliot felt dizzy, overwhelmed, and sick to his stomach. Maybe because he hadn’t had solid food since the acid carrot, which probably didn’t count as food anyway, maybe because he hadn’t had a drink since they left the charming little pub and he was trying to sober himself out a bit too quickly. Maybe because he was suddenly engaged to a woman he didn’t know. A Woman. In a sick sort of way, his family would finally be proud of him, if they knew. Eliot was in full on crisis mode, verging on a panic attack, when Margo came strutting over.

“So there’s a bump,” she told him.

“Bigger than marrying a total stranger-ette?” Eliot asked, trying to spin some humor into the situation.

“Apparently marriage here is different, really different.”

“Right, but as High King I can get, like, a royal annulment.”

“No. Never. Once you get married, you won’t be able to be with anyone else. Literally. For the rest of you life”

She was breaking the idea down into short digestible sentences, but Eliot couldn’t quite put it all the way together. Or he could, but he really didn’t want to.

“Here, but when I go back, I can…” Margo shook her head quickly, “I can never leave Fillory.”

He paused for a second, then turned away from the heartbroken look on Margo’s face, unable to bear it. “Jesus,” he muttered to himself, taking his flask out of his pocket.

“El, you don’t have to-”

“No, don’t…” he paused, thinking quickly for a second before handing the half opened flask over to Margo, “I’m doing this.”

“Eliot…”

“Margo. I am miserable. My life, it doesn’t work. Nothing’s ever fixed that. Drugs, sex, food, booze. Not even magic. But maybe, it led to this, to now, for a reason that’s actually finally going to make my life not just about me and my thoughts, and my feelings. Something-”

“Bigger,” Margo interrupted, tears she was holding back choking her up a bit.

“How wise you are,” Eliot told her softly “Queen Margo the Destroyer.”

He bent into a low bow as Margo scoffed a little. Tears were actually beginning to fall from her eyes. The worst part about doing something selfless for once in his damn life was that it was hurting the one person who mattered most to him.

“Um, is it okay if I hate that you’re getting married?” Eliot nodded softly, heart absolutely aching for the girl, “Shit, I think you’re the only person that I can stand.”

“You know what that means?” he asks her, rushing forwards to sup his hands gently around her face, “You have to be my best man.”

Margo laughed, and he bent down to place a kiss on her forehead. She wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him down so she could plant a kiss on his cheek. He didn’t know how she could stand him after everything he’d put her through in the last few months, but he felt such an overwhelming amount of love for her that he thought he could burst with it.

“Well then, as your best man, I have to ask, are you wearing that to your wedding? It’s not a bad outfit, but you slept in it last night and I really expect you to go all out for your wedding day.”

“Unfortunately, I think I can wear this and still be the best dressed man there. I doubt they have any better options, I mean have you seen what people around here are wearing?”

They both burst into a fit of giggles that lightened the air around them tremendously. He tried not to think about how they were all going to die trying to kill the Beast the next day.

-

Later on, Quentin found him sitting at a table under a tree. He sat down next to him and seemed to want to talk, but not quite sure where to start.

“Hey,” he started, his nervousness in his voice almost bring it to more of a question than a greeting.

“Hey, Q,” Eliot replied gently, not wanting to scare the boy off with an unconsciously terse tone.

“I-uh, well, I wanted to apologize-“

“You really don’t-“

“No, Eliot, please let me say this,” Q cut across Eliot, placing a hand over where Eliot’s rested on the bench in between them. Eliot nodded and made a motion to symbolize zipping his lips.

“Um, I’m sorry for blaming you. I’m sorry I reacted the way I did, it wasn’t fair. You… you don’t have to forgive me, but I had to say it. I’m glad I fell back to Earth and was able to clear my head of what was going on, but I’m sorry for what you had to endure to get here. And I’m sorry for what you’re going to endure for a deal that I made.”

“I forgive you, Quentin. Who hasn’t acted like a little shit when they woke up with a huge hangover after they had a drunken threesome with their best friends? We’ve all been there,” that got a little chuckle from Q, “As for the whole marriage deal, don’t worry about it. The big traditional story book romance was never in my cards.”

“I really wasn’t thinking anyone else but me was going to have to take on this responsibility,” Quentin told him miserably.

“I know, Quentin,” Eliot replied, putting his arms around the other boy’s shoulders and pulling him close, pressing a kiss into the top of his head. Q would never have agreed to the price of marriage to a stranger if he didn’t think it was him that was being bound to it. It was probably a good thing that it didn’t end up being Quentin though, Alice might actually have murdered him.

-

The wedding was… quaint. He literally had not spoken to the girl before meeting her at the altar. She’d been swept away the moment he was declared High King. She seemed sweet and innocent, shy and pretty. Eliot felt guilty that he could never be the husband she deserved, it just wasn’t possible. But he was going to try his best to really not be horrible, he wasn’t going to sink back down into that comfortable, familiar depression. That is, if he didn’t die, because that was a definite possibility.

“Eliot,” he said as she stood before him, meeting her clear blue eyes.

“Fen,” she replied with a smile.

“Nice to meet you. Will you marry me?” 

As far as vows went, it was a bit lackluster, but there weren’t any emotions to put into it without making this situation worse. Hello, nice to meet you, this is a wedding of convenience and necessity to give your father a pampered life and give me and my friends a knife that will hopefully save us all from being brutally murdered. Thank you for your understanding. The girl -Fen, his wife- seemed happy enough to be marrying royalty, though, and soon long woven garlands were draped around their necks. This seemed to signify their official status as husband and wife, let the festivities begin. 

Eliot made a point to seek out Quentin in the following celebrations (Eliot was trying to be generous, but he really could not allow himself to refer to a backyard bonfire as a wedding reception) to make sure he was alright. Everyone else was cheering and laughing, which gave Eliot a bit of privacy with Quentin even while they were standing in the middle of a crowd. Q seemed just about as gob-smacked by the occasion as Eliot himself felt. He steeled himself for the return of Quentin’s cold rage, he wasn’t quite sure whether he was trying to make amends or if this was another way to punish himself. He approached Quentin, clearing his throat a little to get his attention and watched Q flash him a quick false smile, not seeming to know how to feel about the whole wedding deal, even given their previous conversation.

“Uh, I guess congratulations are in order? Or, I-I don’t know, should I ask how you’re doing with this?” Quentin said, not quite meeting Eliot’s eyes, rather seeming to look at his left ear instead. It seemed like he still felt guilty.

“Neutral, all things considered,” Eliot admitted with a chuckle “I mean, hey, obviously my first choice in magically arranged marriage wouldn’t be this, but the fate of the world and all we hold dear and so on.”

“So you’re not, like, feeling even more of that low-key death wish because of this?” Quentin asked softly, finally meeting eyes, the concern in them breaking Eliot’s heart just a little bit more.

“No,” he answered honestly, matching Quentin’s solemn tone, looking straight back into his warm brown eyes so he could try to settle some of that worry, “I promise, this isn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back, Q.”

“That’s… good,” Quentin replied, seeming to be slightly settled at the answer.

“Hey, Quentin, I want you to know that I am sorry,” Eliot told him, holding onto the other boy’s shoulder, “About everything, especially you and Alice. Look, I know I had absolutely no right to destroy that, and I don’t know if I can just totally blame it on the emotions bottles, or the alcohol. A selfish, jealous part of me wanted that to go up in flames, and I just… I need you to know I’m sorry about it.”

A drunk man with a tankard interrupted with an incomprehensible yell, clapping Eliot on the shoulder before turning away to spread his merriness elsewhere. Eliot smiled at the man and let him hand trail down Quentin’s arm before it fell limply to his side. He’d lost Q’s gaze once again.

“Hey, it takes two to tango, right? Everyone gets a little blame for that, I’m certainly not exempt,” Quentin replied, crossing his arms around himself.

“Three in our case, I think, but point taken,” Eliot quipped “What I’m trying to get at is I-”

At that point the knife maker came up with the small chest containing the Leo blade, holding it open for them to see. Quentin immediately walks up to the man, and away from the words Eliot was having trouble stringing together.

“The blade is yours.” he told them. Quentin automatically reached for it, but as soon as his touched it he drew his hand back as if burned.

“That’s hot!”

“Here, maybe it’s just for High Kings,” Eliot offered, trying to grab the handle and immediately getting burned as well “Woah, Jesus! Okay, father-in-law, why is this blade a thousand degrees?”

“It may only be handled by master magicians. Are none of you masters?”

Eliot really didn’t appreciate the tone this man was taking.

“Okay, I found the castle. We can-“ Penny came running over then saw the blade “Oh, cool. Ah! Fuck! I hate this place!”

That was the end of feeling like they finally might have scraped some level ground with the goddamn Beast.

-

They went inside to a small tavern, gathered around a fire and tried to think their way around the knife dilemma. Or at least the rest of the group did while his brand new father in law sat down with him and his brand new wife to ask him, in better words, when Eliot was going to fuck his wife. Because apparently that was the most important thing at the moment. Was everyone in Fillory really so used to living under the Beast that they didn’t care to see the urgency of this mission? Well, it had to happen tonight, the knife maker insisted. Eliot didn’t want to know what horrible thing the laws of the land deemed would occur if he didn’t lie with the girl, seeing as he was already magically bound in a marriage he had no wish to be in he supposed he’d have to roll with it. He was half listening to their discussion about whether to track down the gods, Ember and Umber, or get the girl from the Beast’s dungeon to help as he talked this frankly humiliating arrangement out with the girl and her father.

“Eliot?” Margo called for his opinion, sounding exasperated.

“Yeah… according to the fine print not actually written down, I have a virgin farm girl to impregnate.”

“Right this second?”

“This very one,” he replied “Best of luck all, you’re welcome. Mrs. Me?”

Eliot held his hand out to his wife and let her lead the way out of the room, to where ever it happened to be that they’d have to do the deed.

“If I die while he’d balling himself limp I’ll haunt the shit out of his ass,” Eliot heard Penny say in annoyance.

“You know I actually wouldn’t mind that too much,” he called back.

There wasn’t much to say for the experience except that it was awkward and he really would rather not have been the one to uh… deflower the girl. It wasn’t that he hadn’t had sex with women, he grew up gay in a small rural town, so of course he had tried to fix himself in that particular way. And of course there was Margo, even before the drunken threesome, things just happen sometimes when you love another person that much. Too much alcohol, just plain being bored, sometimes just because. It was just how their friendship worked, it was a weird understanding between them that he didn’t expect people on the outside to get. This was different, but it evidently had to be done.

In the aftermath Eliot lay there thinking about what he’d been about to say to Quentin before his father-in-law had interrupted. “What I’m trying to say is I love you.”

What a fucking idiot. Thank god for that interruption because the fall out from those words could certainly be enough to send him spiraling back down, and he’d only just found a rickety little raft to steady himself on temporarily.

-

It turns out that Quentin and Julia’s plan is the one that worked out. 

The rest found Victoria, and they also found Plover, who informed them that Martin Chatwin was, in fact, the Beast. Eliot couldn’t really blame him after all the boy went through at the hands of a man meant to be his caretaker. He was really seeing the upsides of testing the Leo blade on Plover, like Quentin suggested. Victoria told Penny how her tattoos were a spell that helped her take ride-alongs when she traveled, but shortly after her and Josh bolted.

Meanwhile, Quentin returned with a bottle of god semen. Unexpected, but apparently Ember told him he had to… imbibe it in order to gain the power to kill the Beast. Eliot couldn’t blame Quentin for looking queasy at the thought, the bottle wasn’t small and honestly what was more disgusting than cold, partially congealed cum. Julia had disappeared, Quentin didn’t seem too eager to talk about it but it seems as if Ember did something to Julia and she was suffering.

Quentin decided against knocking back Ember’s essence, in what was either a moment of humility or self-doubt he seemed sure that Alice was the one meant to face down Martin Chatwin. Eliot wondered if this was actually because he was so thoroughly disgusted at the thought of having to drink the godly spunk or because he actually didn’t believe he was meant to do this. Alice downed it all in one go, and it was finally good news for this mission because she was able to handle the Leo blade. 

Penny traveled them all to the Wellspring, where apparently the Beast would drink from the source of all Magic to strengthen himself, while also depleting the resource from the rest of Fillory. Even Julia had rejoined them for this, looking as though she’d just been crying. There was a certain air of apprehension when they approached, but Eliot was beginning to doubt that this was the right place when Penny piped up.

“The Wellspring of all magic? It’s a truck stop shit-house.” It really did resemble an outhouse.

“He’ll be here soon,” Quentin muttered, turning to Alice “Let’s go.”

She nodded and followed him to the little run-down shack, the rest of their group trailing behind. The inside didn’t dimensionally add up to the outside, and it took a second for Eliot to piece together where he was. The walls lined with bookshelves, the writing desk.

“The fuck?” Penny said, more as a indication of surprise than an actual question.

“It’s Plover’s writing room,” Quentin supplied an answer anyway.

“All that power, and he can’t stop thinking about where it happened,” Eliot commented, feeling sick thinking about poor preteen Martin Chatwin. 

“Fillory needs meds way more than magic,” Margo commented bitterly, striding over to check behind the desk, Eliot following her.

“Okay, so, where’s the actual Wellspring?”

“Poor Martin,” Alice whispered.

“Okay, so-“ Quentin started, before cutting himself off suddenly. Eliot glanced up to see what had interrupted Quentin to see an unnaturally blue moth fluttering towards the door. Shit. He saw the shadows of the moths surrounding the figure of a grown man before he actually saw him.

“Quentin,” Martin said casually, mild but casual surprise in his voice, “Is it time for this already?”

Quentin drew a shaky breath, steeling himself “Hi, Martin. We know it’s you.”

“Hmm,” Martin hummed, allowing the moths to dissipate from obscuring his face, the door behind him slamming and locking simultaneously, Eliot glanced fearfully at Margo and found her already staring at him, fear plan on her face, “Well, you made it a good long way this time around. But, this is it, Quentin.”

“I know you’re still in there, look at this,” Quentin gestured around at the room and Martin poured himself a drink, not bothering to acknowledge that Q was trying to reason with him, “You still feel, you’re still hurt, and you should be after what happened to you-“

The Beast was just laughing at Quentin now. Eliot had to hand it to Q for trying to connect to Martin’s humanity after knowing he’s been murdered by him thirty nine times, but it was obviously getting them nowhere as a way to stall. Eliot was afraid that Alice wasn’t going to be able to kill the Beast before he effortlessly slaughtered them all for the final time.

Quentin made a last ditch offer to try to engage the Beast in a little conversation for time, rambling about a message Jane wanted Martin to have all while holding a hand up to the Beast and circling around the room until Martin’s back was to all the others, leaving him exposed to Alice. Quick thinking. He reached into his coat pocket for something, and pulled out deck of cards.

Martin didn’t seem at all impressed with this, he was chastising Quentin on the pathetic nature of his stalling techniques, advising him to put something more useful in his pocket next time. Alice approached, reaching for the knife in her belt. Margo moved protectively in front of Eliot, almost unconsciously.

“Oh that’s right,” the Beast said, reaching out and choking Quentin with one six fingered hand, lifting him off the ground, “No next time."

Alice was fumbling with the belt for too long before it became obvious the knife just wasn’t there. She cursed, which only brought Martin’s attention to her. He used telekinesis to take her breath away and Alice fell to her knees. Shit, this wasn’t going to work. They were all going to die and there wasn’t a rewind button this time. 

“You’re stronger than you were. Haven’t learned to cast while you’re bleeding out?”

That’s when Eliot noticed he wasn’t just choking Alice, a trickle of blood was spilling out her nose. With one lazy movement, he pushed Alice aside and she crouched down on all fours, choking and sputtering up blood on the floor. Eliot’s brain was overloading with sheer panic, but he was reflexively brought up a defensive spell to counter the Beast.

“Oh, for the love of Christ, children,” him and Margo were slammed back into the bookshelves, hard. Penny immediately stepped forward, and with no effort at all he was brought to a surrendering position, it was the last thing Eliot saw before something inside him just snapped and everything went completely black. There was nothing.

-

**Author's Note:**

> I'm working on more! Thank you so much to everyone who read the first part of this series :)


End file.
